Burning 16x DVD+Rs at 4x would be better, surely?

[Foebane72]

MODS: I posted this thread to the VCDEasy board without realising it was dead, so please delete it from there.

I recently burned a whole series of these discs from Maxell to 4x rather than 16x, as I figured there would be more time in a slower burn for the laser to mark the dye surface and make it more legible and last longer. But then I hear that the newer dyes work BETTER at a faster speed - would someone care to explain that to me?

Once I read about using the native speed for burning mentioned on the packaging, I reburned another copy of the discs at 16x, so now I have two copies, one done at 4x and the other at 16x.

I figured this would give me the best of both worlds, to see which one fails first, but why does a faster burn work better?

UPDATE: I think I may have seen the answer for myself just now, by examining the surface of the discs in question - the ones burned at the faster speed actually look darker than their 4x counterparts, so maybe it does make a difference.

In any case, unlike a flash drive suddenly failing to work outright, if my discs do become partially unreadable, I should be able to salvage most of the data, right?

[hech54]

Yes....NOT burning at Maximum speed is always a good idea. Most important is buying good discs. Verbatim(NOT their "Life" series though) or Taiyo Yuden are still the best.
Looking at the burned side of the discs is not going to tell you anything.

[Foebane72]

Yes....NOT burning at Maximum speed is always a good idea. Most important is buying good discs. Verbatim(NOT their "Life" series though) or Taiyo Yuden are still the best.
Looking at the burned side of the discs is not going to tell you anything.

What does the Verbatim "Life" series look like? Is it the purple packaging? Or is that just their DVD PLUS R discs?

[mike20021969]

What does the Verbatim "Life" series look like?

Try Google??

I did it for you and found this:
http://www.verbatim.com/prod/optical-media/dvd/dvd-r-life-series/dvd-dash-r-life-series/

[jman98]

Foebane72 - You must consider that we live in an "I want it NOW if not sooner!" kind of world. The "newer dyes work better at a faster speed" stuff sounds like just a bunch of bs pandering to the audience that can't live if anything takes more than 5 minutes to complete. The only time I ever bothered to do an A-B test on burning was when I was making some copies of a home movie DVD and I did some burns at different speeds on the same media just to check results. For whatever it's worth, I used some Nero tool (it may have been Disc Speed - I don't remember) to check the burns and the slower burns all had fewer errors.

Maxell has ALWAYS been notorious for their low quality discs. Some years ago when I didn't know any better and most manufacturers were actually producing high quality consumer burnable DVD discs, I bought a 25 pack of Maxell. They were crap. Got 3 coasters out of the pack, which at the time was unbelievably bad. Never bought them again and ended replacing every Maxell burned disc with a Verbatim copy of the same thing. Again, my experience is that the faster you burn, the more errors the burn has and with low quality media like Maxell, your 16x burns are very likely to have a lot more errors than the 4x ones. Do note that errors always happen with burns and usually don't get noticed. What's important is how many you have and typically low quality media produces a lot of them.

[Foebane72]

Thanks, JMan! I am going to reburn the whole lot with the Verbatim purple DVD+Rs anyway. At 8x, for a reasonable compromise.

Mike? Sorry to make you do all that work, I did the same search myself but didn't post here to tell anyone. I wanted to check because I was afraid that Verbatim wouldn't clearly show the difference between the brands, but they do, so I know now what NOT to look for. Thanks.

[mike20021969]

Thanks.

No worries at all

[Foebane72]

Should I burn the new discs at 12x?

I use ImgBurn, I assume it will only list the burning speeds permitted by my Samsung burner firmware?

[HemLok]

I always buy 16x rated good Verbatim SL blanks. The slowest I'd burn them is at 8x but I also burn at 12x, 16x, and even up to 22x although that's when the consistency can drop. It depends on the situation. I prefer to stay at or below the disc rating when it comes to 16x rated blank. Personally, I would never burn a reliable brand 16x rated disc slower than 8x. If I was going to burn at 4x then I'd just buy 8x rated blanks and save a little money.

[jman98]

For what it's worth, I NEVER burn a DVD any faster than 4x unless it's a copy for someone else, they're not paying me anything for the copy or my time to make it, and I simply do not have time to wait for a slower burn. My test that I mentioned earlier showed me conclusively that burn errors go up with speed of burn, even on top grade media. I can wait for the burn to finish at a lower speed. The subject of burn speed is controversial and I burn slower than most people but then again I seem to have a lot more patience than most people. Plus, I don't have only computer at home, so it's easy for me to have one PC tied up doing this.

Just FYI, note that if the Verbatim discs do not explicitly say "Life Series" then they are for sure the "good" Verbatim. Everything they make for DVD media not called "Life Series" without exception uses Verbatim's AZO technology, which is the "good" media.

Yes, ImgBurn will show the burning speeds possible for your media using that burner.

[Foebane72]

Thanks once again, everyone!

[hech54]

Just FYI, note that if the Verbatim discs do not explicitly say "Life Series" then they are for sure the "good" Verbatim. Everything they make for DVD media not called "Life Series" without exception uses Verbatim's AZO technology, which is the "good" media.

Indeed. I've never even seen "Life" discs in person.

[hello_hello]

Here's my take on it.
There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that dyes can be optimised for burning at different speeds. Anyone remember when faster burners were only just becoming common place and often discs would be labelled with something like "only suitable for use with a high speed burner"?

Burners don't burn a disc the same way regardless of speed. The laser has to heat the disc so the burner changes the laser strength as it burns etc, so there's nothing to say it can't burn just as well at a faster speed. It really depends on the particular burner/firmware/disc combination as to which speed is best. To my way of thinking the only rule is there isn't a rule. Some burners burn one brand of disc better than other burners. I have Pioneer burner which struggled to burn a Verbatim disc at any speed when I bought it. The quality was just terrible. A firmware upgrade later and it does a very good job, even at 20x.

The rated burning speed of burners is a massive case of misleading advertising. No burner burns the whole disc at one speed, they start off slow and ramp up the speed as the burn progresses. Just because you pick 16x doesn't mean the disc is being burned at 16x. That's just the maximum speed which will be achieved if you fill the entire disc. I've got one burner which is only marginally faster at 16x than another burner is at 12x because the first burner takes a little longer to ramp up the speed than the second, so it's in fact burning at least some of the disc slower at 16x than the second burner is at 12x.

Anyway, I've owned several different burners over the years, burned hundreds and hundreds of discs and I've run hundreds of burn quality tests. As a result, I only use Verbatim discs (the good ones with the Azo dye) and I settled on Pioneer burners. I even developed theories I can't actually prove, such as the ambient temperature having a slight effect on burn quality, and I'm convinced after having been through several disc burning marathons, the more discs I burned in a row the more likely the burn quality would be high, and I can only put that down to the successive burns blowing the dust out of the burner..... Maybe that's why sometimes slower might seem a little better..... more time to blow out the dust.

There's absolutely no way you can burn one disc at one speed and a second disc at another, check their quality and know for a fact that one speed is better because it'll vary a fair bit anyway at a given speed. You really need to check a lot of discs and take an average..... Which is kind of what I did over time. As a result, if I use my old Pioneer 112/212 burners to burn Verbatim discs I burn them at 12x because that's the speed at which the quality seems to be best on average. The newer Pioneer burners seem to do just as well at 16x and I'm convinced at slower speeds the quality drops a little..... on average. That's just Verbatim discs though. Changing the brand of disc will no doubt change the result but as I mainly stick with Verbatim I haven't developed any burn speed rules for other brands. There's no doubt though if you use crappy discs then burning more slowly can improve the quality, but there's no guarantee.

And of course don't forget the 4GB wobble..... that's around the point where if the quality is going to drop it'll more likely happen, but not in my opinion, just because of the burn speed. I've seen quite a few low speed burns still turn to shite around the 4GB mark.

Unfortunately there's not a lot of burners on the market these days which can be used to run burn quality tests and I couldn't even tell you which ones can, and you need the software to do it anyway. So my advice would be not to burn at a painfully slow speed in the hope it'll improve the quality.... personally I wouldn't consider burning slower than 12x because based on my experience it'll make no difference when using good quality discs, it may even reduce the quality a little and life's just too short. I've got three burners in this PC and I've often burned three discs at a time and I still burn at a minimum of 12x.
Once again though, it's very burner/firmware/disc dependant. It's very possible a particular burner might do better with a particular brand of disc at a slower speed, but it's very possible it also won't.

PS I tried a spindle of Taiyo Yuden discs at one stage, just to see what the fuss was all about. They're fairly expensive where I am and not easy to come by, but I thought what the hell..... I pretty sure my Pioneer burners burn at a slightly higher quality using Verbatim dics than they do with Taiyo Yuden. There wasn't much in it, but I went back to Verbaitm.

[Foebane72]

Well, I've just gotten my Verbatims and burned a set of almost-perfect discs, no coasters and ImgBurn success jingles every time.

BUT, one of the burned discs has noticeable banding near the middle of the disc, like the burn was uneven. Should that be a cause for concern or should I just not be worried about a physical inspection like this?

[mike20021969]

banding near the middle of the disc, like the burn was uneven.

This can be caused by inconsistent burn speed (e.g. if the hard drive is being accessed by a process other than burning program).

Sometimes burns may start at one speed (slower than selected) and then change to another (e.g. selected burn speed) mid burn. I've have this happen on occassion without ill effect to the burned dvd.

[hello_hello]

Well, I've just gotten my Verbatims and burned a set of almost-perfect discs, no coasters and ImgBurn success jingles every time.

BUT, one of the burned discs has noticeable banding near the middle of the disc, like the burn was uneven. Should that be a cause for concern or should I just not be worried about a physical inspection like this?

It may be due to the way the burner burns the disc, although if you're using the same burner and speed each time it should burn the same way each time.
One burning method is called "constant linear velocity". The burner slowly increases the speed until it reaches maximum. Another method is called "zonal constant linear velocity", where the burner changes speed in distinct steps. I thought most burners used the CLV method these days, but maybe not. It shouldn't matter either way, as long as the burn quality is good.

There's info and a pic on this page, which shows the different way a burned disc will probably look when one burn method is used compared to the other.
http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/media/dvd-media-concepts.htm

Most drives will slow the burn down if they detect the quality is too low, which may also cause the dye to look "banded" after the burn. Does ImgBurn show you the actual speed at which it's burning? I can't remember as I've not used it in quite a while. If it does, the burn speed should ideally never decrease as the burn progresses.
If you can't run a burn quality test and you're unsure, probably the only method you have to perform a rough quality check is to copy the contents of the DVD back to your hard drive. If the drive starts off at one speed and the speed of the copy process increases steadily until it's done, then at least the drive is having no problems reading the disc. If the speed varies a lot (slows down noticeably, then speeds up again) you might be advised to throw the disc away and burn another one.

I wasn't actually looking for info on the topic, but here's an opinion from the digitalfaq web site regarding burning speed. It's from the same page I linked to earlier in this post. Keep in mind it's pretty old, but it still has valid points.

PS. And here's the go-to page for info regarding the blank disc you're using:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm
It's reasonably up to date, and the info it contains doesn't change in a hurry anyway.


Myth of burning slower. Discs are made to perform at an ideal rotational speed, which is where write strategy originates. The disc will perform best up to a certain speed, and the drive will not permit any faster. The inverse is the same, but until recently, drives would not prevent unreasonably low speeds. Modern human nature tends to want more speed and more power, so this was not really a concern.
But believe it or not, there are still people who insist on waiting 55-60 minutes to burn a CD or DVD at 1x speed, because they are convinced anything faster will yield a bad or “lower” quality burn. However, burning too slow is often just as bad as burning too fast. Because of this unreasonable impulse to go too slow, some discs and drives now block out the lower range too (and causes problems, see the 16x section for more).
There was some truth to that statement in the beginning, (circa 1995 for CD-R, 2001 for DVD-R), but those days are long gone. The only reason that myth ever held truth was because 2x was the fastest speed, and burning a single full or half speed under the maximum rating is helpful on lower quality blank CD/DVD media. If you are worried about quality, or if the media tends to be dodgy quality at the maximum rated speed, then burn a full or half step slower. No more. With a 8x disc, for example, a burn speed of 4x or 6x would be optimal.

Age of 16x DVD media. When DVD burning technology was developed, CD burning had just hit its prime with 16x speeds and BurnProof technology with decent buffers. For years, consumers whined that DVD burning was too slow, as compared to CD (regardless of the storage size differences), so 16x has long been a goal of drive manufacturers. And this is probably where speeds will stop.
The main drawback to this now-achieved goal, is that it seems rushed, given the experiences of those who routinely attempt 16x burning. It’s become a common practice to burn at 8x or 12x on 16x media, because it simply performs poorer, with a higher coaster count, at the 16x speed. Advanced PI/PIE/PO and speed read tests also show a degraded level of performance. Even high-grade media like Taiyo Yuden and Mitsubishi is not immune to this problem. And it’s not like the wait is any longer between 8x-16x anyway, just 1-2 minutes in most cases.
DVD recorders are most affected, with their 1x real-time recording method. Most 16x media is not true multi-speed media, so burning at 1x yields a high coaster count, assuming the machine will even acknowledge the blank disc. Quite a few DVD recorders, even ones purchased as recently as 2005-2006, are known to reject 16x discs, refusing to even see the blank. Luckily, Mitsubishi (Verbatim branded) 1x-16x MCC DVD-R tends to work well in this situation.

[addu]

Better burn all ur cd's or dvd's with nti software. It is only software with no error at whatever speed.

[fritzi93]

Better burn all ur cd's or dvd's with nti software. It is only software with no error at whatever speed.

Well that should stir up a hornets' nest.

You must be joking.

[mazinz]

Better burn all ur cd's or dvd's with nti software. It is only software with no error at whatever speed.

Well that should stir up a hornets' nest.

You must be joking.

hahah I have not heard NTI mentioned in years, though back in the day it was very nice software, especially since it let you burn the then nonstandard, high rate vcd with the 2500 bitrate (since a lot of players at the time actually could play a vcd with that bitrate and not have issue)

for the topic at hand, I still never burn higher than 4x

[addu]

If u don't believe just try with any of trial nti's version to see it. Perfect to rip and write with no errors on any media and make.

[fritzi93]

hahah I have not heard NTI mentioned in years, though back in the day it was very nice software, especially since it let you burn the then nonstandard, high rate vcd with the 2500 bitrate (since a lot of players at the time actually could play a vcd with that bitrate and not have issue)

That's going back a bit.

I used NTI to burn XVCDs also.

Then I got an XP computer and the NTI version I had wouldn't work any more.

[EDIT] @ addu: it's the "no errors on any media" claim that is going to be hard to put over.

[hech54]

Better burn all ur cd's or dvd's with nti software. It is only software with no error at whatever speed.

Location: India

OK then.

[Foebane72]

I've completed my burning task now and I should be OK for a few years, with four copies each of my four project discs, which is the least I can fit 16-17Gb on, no duplicates across them at all.

I've used DVD-/+Rs for years for backup purposes, as I've had a lot of success with the good discs, and it works well as a backup medium as I can see the data on the surface, or at least the darker part, and as long as there is no dust, smears or scratches, there's a good probability I can read the data (if anything, I think with future tech it might be possible to recover previously unreadable discs, if they can examine phonograph records microscopically and recreate the waveforms without any physical contact, etc.

The only irritating problem with DVD+R is that if there are any updates to the files, then whole new discs need to be reburned - I've chucked away hundreds of perfectly good discs in the past, basically because the data was out-of-date. Well, I tried a different system last year, where I keep the original data on the DVDs and "patch" the files as necessary, within a copy of the existing folder structure, just by drag-and-drop, and save all the patches to CD-R, or DVD+R if you're adding TONS of data. The system worked quite well, and it certainly postpones the "redundant disc" scenario.

Of course I will keep the data on my computer's HDD and a hidden backup using the "Computer Management" facility of Windows, and a Flash drive and SD card to boot. But I do still like optical discs, I hate the idea that they may be soon dying out because of everyone moving to removable hard drives (they're overrated, BTW).